


The Storm

by skybone



Series: Holding the Sky [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, F/F, Heavy Angst, Not Canon Compliant, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:07:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skybone/pseuds/skybone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when Cassandra and Trev fight, and it's a serious one?</p><p>  <i>When the Inquisitor is angry her fury burns like a sullen, angry fire, and harsh flames spit out to sear all they touch. When Cassandra is angry she steps with the tightly controlled, elegant movements of a predator, all white teeth and yellow eyes and the coppery smell of hot blood. But Cassandra is helpless against the Inquisitor, because her anger cannot strike with words, and Trev can.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Storm

**Author's Note:**

> A story about taking risks. There's an awful lot of pain and angst in this. Prepare to wallow. (Oh, and there's some smut.) 
> 
> The end notes talk more about the writing of it.

Cassandra could only take so much teasing.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like it; there was nothing she didn’t like about the touch of the Inquisitor’s hands, the Inquisitor’s mouth. Trev was very, very good at doing exactly the things Cassandra liked. But if she was teased and teased, with no resolution... well. At a certain point her frustration would fracture her self control, and she would rise up with a growl like a stormcloud boiling up over a mountain, all thunder and lightning and surging promise, and suddenly it would be Trev who was under her lover’s hands and mouth, Trev who was being teased. And Trev would grin and laugh and then her laughter would catch and turn unsteady, and she would lose herself in the flare of lightning. And when she found herself again, there would be no teasing, only an intent certainty that brought them together again until the storm cracked and burst once more and spilled Cassandra with it.

It was a game they both enjoyed, one that left them drained and looselimbed in the enormous bed in the Inquisitor’s quarters, half talking, half dozing in the solace of a relaxation rarely equalled in the consternations and conflicts of their daily lives.

Perhaps on that day the pleasant lassitude ran deeper, because the tension that preceded it had run higher. A week before, they had killed a dragon. But it had nearly killed them first.

Or, more accurately, it had nearly killed the Inquisitor. Its head had whipped around and caught Trev from the side, and sent her flying into a wall.

Cassandra thought it _had_ killed her. Trev had fallen awkwardly and hard and was lying very still as the dragon turned to respond to an attack by one of the others, and a potion could not heal a broken neck. She had charged the beast with a roar of desperate ferocity, and the others had redoubled their efforts, and the dragon, which had been on its last legs when it had struck Trev, had finally fallen.

By then the Inquisitor had begun to stir, and Cassandra felt a wave of relief that threatened to undo her. “Are you all right?” she said as Trev sat up. Sweat was stinging her eyes, making them water, and she wiped it impatiently away, feeling hot and shaky.

“Just bruises,” said Trev. Her breathing was still unsteady. “Had the wind knocked out of me.”

Cassandra held out a hand. Trev took it, wincing, and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. “And I think I’m going to have a kink in my neck that will require your expert attention.”

Cassandra pulled her into a rough hug, a demonstration of feelings she rarely made in public. “I thought—” she said, and then, “I am glad it is only bruises and a kink. I thought you’d broken your neck.”

Trev hugged her back, hard. “I’m tougher than that,” she said. “I bounce, not break.”

There was nothing Cassandra could think of to say to that. But later in camp, trying to work out the knots in the Inquisitor’s neck and listening to Trev yelp when she probed especially tender spots, she wished it was true, that Trev could bounce back from all the dangers that threatened her, and that they were really no threat at all. And when she stopped and Trev stretched her neck carefully and then sighed happily at her and thanked her, she could only think of how fragile and tentative anyone’s grasp on life was.

“She should not take such chances,” she thought, suddenly and inexplicably angry with her lover. “There is no need for her to kill dragons, and there _is_ a need for her to do other things.”

That had been a week ago. And for the entire week Cassandra had been thinking about it, and her opinion had solidified into a stone that weighted everything she did.

And that was why, lying there, she said, “You really should not risk yourself killing dragons. There is no great benefit to it that makes it necessary. And you are the only person who can close rifts—it is foolish to risk yourself just for a dragon kill.”

Trev had been lying back, lazy and relaxed, her eyes shut; but now a different kind of stillness came over her. After a moment she said, “I enjoy hunting dragons. It is... a break from more serious endeavours.”

“Still,” said Cassandra, “it is an unnecessary risk, for both yourself and the Inquisition.”

The stillness acquired a certain level of tension. “Well,” said Trev, “I do not believe it is a serious risk.”

“You can say that, after the last dragon?” said Cassandra incredulously.

“I had the wind knocked out of me,” said Trev, sitting up. She got up and padded to the fireplace and squatted down and took a poker to the coals, making them flare up. “That is hardly serious.” Her scars shimmered in the dim light; she did not have as many marks as Cassandra, but enough. She looked like a woman made of dwarven-crafted metal, smooth and hard and traced with silver.

“That dragon almost broke your neck!” said Cassandra.

“But it didn’t.” Trev’s back seemed uncharacteristically stiff.

“But—” said Cassandra. But the Inquisitor interrupted her.

“Stop it, Cassandra,” she said. “This is not something I want to talk about now.”

The Seeker shut her mouth. But she was annoyed, and no longer pleasantly relaxed.

Trev blew out the candles and came back to bed. She rolled into her usual position, tucked up against Cassandra, but somehow she seemed to have more elbows than usual.

*           *           *

Cassandra _wanted_ to talk about it. If Trev would talk about it, she would soon have to admit that Cassandra was right: hunting dragons was risky business. Trev took her responsibilities seriously; if she could be convinced that dragon-hunting would harm the Inquisition, she would stop.

But Trev refused to talk about it. When Cassandra tried to bring it up, which she did several times over the next few weeks, the Inquisitor deflected onto some other topic, or simply refused to discuss the matter.

It was very frustrating.

And then a new dragon moved into Crestwood. It had begun to raid the farmers’ herd beasts, and was rapidly becoming more than a nuisance.

Cassandra found out about Trev’s plans when Bull let slip during a game of Wicked Grace that he was going to accompany the Inquisitor on a dragon-hunting trip—a trip that the Seeker had not been told about, much less invited on. This was an unpleasant surprise. She _always_ went on dragon-hunting trips with Trev; her experience with dragons had more than once saved lives, including the Inquisitor’s.

“You didn’t tell me about this expedition,” she said to Trev, frowning.

“I didn’t think you’d want to come,” said Trev, “as you have come to disapprove of dragon hunting expeditions so strongly.” There was an edge in her voice.

Bull looked from one to the other but kept his mouth shut. The other conversations between the companions and advisors drifted into silence.

“I don’t approve,” said Cassandra, glowering. “But I cannot believe you would try to hide this from me.”

“Well, it’s not very hidden, is it?” said the Inquisitor, folding her cards and looking at her lover for the first time. “Look, Cassandra. I know you disapprove, but I’m going to go and kill this dragon. I don’t expect you to come with me, knowing how you feel about it. That’s all there is to it.”

There was an exceedingly uncomfortable silence. “I see,” said Cassandra. She looked at her hand of cards and saw nothing. It was her turn. She drew a card and laid another on the table without looking at it.

“Well,” said Varric, “that is an even worse play than you usually make, Seeker.” She scowled at him. And then the others began to speak again, and the moment was past.

She managed another two rounds, and then gave them as much of a smile as she ever did and folded her hand. “I have lost all I am willing to for this night,” she said, “so I will leave you to it.” They called their various farewells to her. Trev said nothing, but simply looked at her with an expressionless face; she looked back, but then Dorian asked her something and she responded to him, and when she looked again Trev was looking away.

She went to her loft in the armoury. It had been some time since she slept there; she did so now only when Trev went on expedition without her. Well, that would happen soon enough; she might as well get a head start.

She could not settle. She paced, feeling confined. The glow from the forges seemed brighter than usual, pulsing; she felt hot yellow light gather behind her eyes. She wanted to hit something. Or bite. She poured herself a brandy, tasted it, and then did not want it.

It was not just that Trev was going to hunt dragons and had not asked her. It was that Trev had not asked her to go, even knowing that Cassandra worried about her safety. That Cassandra was sworn to protect her. That Cassandra—

She did not want Cassandra with her.

She shook her head violently, gulped the brandy, went to the upper loft, and began to undress. When she was down to shirt and breeches she picked up her sword and knelt on her bedroll. And then she stretched the sword across her palms, holding it at chest level, and began to pray.

It was a ritual of the Seekers, a prayer of offering sometimes made before one went into battle. She did not think about why it came to her now. She simply prayed, falling into the pattern of words. She offered herself, offered anything that she was, and everything. She prayed until her arms ached from the strain of holding the sword, and beyond the pain, until she had lost herself. And then eventually she became aware again, and rose, stumbling a little with stiffness, sheathed the sword, removed the last of her clothes, blew out the candle, and climbed into her bedroll.

She lay awake for a very long time, not thinking. She was not sure what she would do if Trev came to her, later in the night; but the Inquisitor did not come.

The next day she felt as grey and raw and brittle as the morning, sullen under lowering skies. But she worked her early routine stubbornly at the training dummies as usual, finished, and went back to her quarters.

Trev was sitting at her table. She looked up as Cassandra came up the stairs, and then stood. The Inquisitor had dark circles under her eyes and looked tired.

“I’m sorry,” said Trev. “I should have told you.”

“Yes,” said Cassandra. “You should have.” And then she put out her arms and pulled Trev into them. She was still frantically angry, but she also needed desperately to hold her lover. “When are you going?”

“In two days,” said Trev in a muffled voice, her arms locked around Cassandra and her face buried in her shoulder.

They stood in silence for a while, and then Cassandra sighed and let go. “You will be careful,” she said.

“Of course I will,” said the Inquisitor. “It’s not a large dragon, but it is doing a great deal of damage. We will deal with it quickly and return.”

They did not speak of the hunt again. On the night before Trev left they made love in an aching silence, and later Cassandra lay awake and thought that the Inquisitor did so as well; but still they said nothing.

*           *           *

The hunting party came back ten days later, and Cassandra watched them ride into the keep from a window in her loft. They were joking and cheerful; evidently the hunt had been a great success. Bull was shouting something to the Inquisitor, and she was laughing. She slid down off her Courser, bouncing on her toes; she looked as if she had enough energy to kill a thousand Corypheuses. Her eye, cast searchingly around the courtyard, caught Cassandra’s at the window and when it did she grinned. The Seeker nodded to her. And then Cullen demanded the Inquisitor’s attention, and Cassandra turned away from the window.

*           *           *

Trev was always energized by killing a dragon, and if there were tasks to do afterwards she was cheerfully and frighteningly efficient at them. It was good when she had tasks, or if they travelled immediately after the killing, because all that spilling, glittering energy needed an outlet.

The first time they had hunted a dragon after they had become lovers, it had been killed less than an hour’s walk from camp. Trev wanted to bring the head back to Skyhold, and so Bull and Vivienne had gone to bring back the scouts who would begin to prepare it for the tanner and move it. Cassandra and the Inquisitor stayed with the dragon to protect it from predators. Trev was all bright nerves and constant movement, pacing back and forth while she watched her companions disappear into the pass that had led them down to the dragon’s lair. Cassandra had pulled out a rag and was checking her sword for any flecks of blood she might have missed in the first cleaning.

And then the Inquisitor was taking the blade out of her hand and putting it in the sheath by the Seeker's side. “What are you doing?” said Cassandra, half puzzled and half amused.

“This,” said Trev, and pushed her back up against a rock wall and kissed her, hard.

And more than kissed her. Her body pinned Cassandra, her hands were fumbling with the Seeker’s belt, the fastenings of her breeches. They had not been lovers for long; Cassandra’s experience with Trev had been that although there was certainly a delightful _intensity_ to her attentions, she was on the whole relaxed and playful in bed. But there was nothing relaxed or playful about this, or even gentle. This was insistent, demanding, and careless. Cassandra, trapped against the cold stone, felt herself ignite, and put her hands on Trev.

The threat of predators meant that they could not undress properly, or allow themselves to be distracted for long, so it was fast and clumsy. Afterwards, still leaning against the wall, Cassandra felt Trev grinning against her neck. “Bull always says he wants sex after killing a dragon. I never really understood what he meant until now.”

“It was certainly... exhilarating,” said Cassandra, whose legs were unsteady under her and who was still catching her breath. She had been taken—and quite literally—by surprise, and the whole thing had been startlingly intense.

That... exhilaration... lasted. That night, when Trev came late to bed in the tent they shared, Cassandra was still awake. As lovers they always put their bedrolls together when on expeditions, but they did not often make love; the tents were set too close together for privacy. But that night Cassandra, who normally was a very private person indeed, did not care.

The Inquisitor stripped down to sleeping shirt and smalls and slid under the blankets, curling toward her, and then went very still; she had realized that the Seeker was entirely naked. By that time Cassandra’s hands were on her, tugging at her smallclothes. Trev lifted her hips so that her lover could pull them entirely off. “Why, Seeker,” the Inquisitor breathed as Cassandra urgently pushed the bunched fabric of her shirt up and lowered her mouth to Trev’s breast, “you are being very... forceful.” Cassandra was beyond speaking, caught in a surging need that made her so feel full of fire and light that she thought it must be leaking from her fingers. She simply grunted and carried on with what she was doing, and the Inquisitor’s breath caught and she had nothing more to say.

Trev did her best to keep silent, but she could not quiet her breathing, and they could do nothing about the rustling and other small sounds made by limbs and blankets and the rhythm of their movement together. Cassandra didn’t care. She wanted Trev, and would have her, and did, and lost herself, her own breathing harsh and well out of control; if someone in the next tent was awake, they would know exactly what the Inquisitor and the Seeker were doing. She did not care.

She had not hunted dragons with a lover before. When it came to dragon hunts, that one was... illuminating.

*           *           *

When the dragon hunters returned Cassandra did not want the Inquisitor to come to her loft, and she did not want to think about why. She told herself that there was no reason to change her routine simply because the Inquisitor had returned; at this time of day the training dummies required her attention. She took her practice weapon, went to the yard, and set to it. It was unlikely that anyone would notice that her workout lasted longer than usual, and that her blows were harder; their attention was elsewhere.

Her moves felt elevated, fluid; she swung and turned and shifted and struck and turned again, a tense patterned dance of violence. She felt as if she could do this all day. She fought the dummies until sweat stung her eyes, blinding her, and her breathing came rough and hard, and then she fought beyond that to something that was, if not peace, at least a kind of accommodation. After that she was able to meet Trev, returned from the council’s briefing, and smile at her calmly.

Trev did not speak about the dragon in front of her, but others were not so careful, and so she eventually heard the entire story of its hunt, which had been on the whole straightforward and unexceptional.

“Why are you so gloomy?” Josephine asked her as she stood scowling at Bull, who was describing the hunt to Skinner and Dalish. “Surely the killing of a dragon is a time to celebrate?”

“I do not think the Inquisitor should be killing dragons,” said Cassandra. “It is an unnecessary risk and a foolish one when she is the only person who can close rifts.”

Josephine stared at her. “I had not thought of that,” she said.

“No one but me has, evidently,” said Cassandra with an edge of bitterness. “Certainly the Inquisitor does not want to think about it.”

Trev asked Cassandra to dine with her in her quarters that evening, and over the meal told stories about her companions and was funny and altogether charming. Cassandra felt a little disoriented; while perfectly normal, it felt somehow also as if she was being courted all over again, and she felt both delighted and uncertain of her welcome. But it was clear by the things she said that the Inquisitor expected her to stay, and later when Trev pulled her over to the settee and began to kiss her, it was equally clear to Cassandra that she very much wanted to.

And so they fell back into their lives, and everything was as it had been.

Almost.

*           *           *

A month or so later there was another dragon, and Trev went out again to hunt it, and again Cassandra did not. She had come to some level of grudging acceptance; she didn’t like it, but she could live with it. But then Trev came back with new scars, and evaded her questions.

Everyone who had been on that expedition seemed to be avoiding her. She finally caught Dorian in conversation with Josephine, and interrupted to demand to know what had happened; she knew she was being rude but was beyond caring. The mage tried to evade her questions, but he was not as immune to intimidation as Trev, and in the end he admitted that it had been a very close call, and told them the details.

Josephine was horrified. “She should not be risking herself this way,” she said.

When Trev joined them, Dorian looked at the Inquisitor and then at Josephine’s face and then at Cassandra, and made a quick retreat.

“Dorian told us what happened,” said Josephine, frowning at Trev. “Should you be risking yourself so, just to kill a dragon?”

Trev did not look at Josephine; she looked instead at Cassandra, her face closed and angry. “It is no more of a risk than anything else I do. And if no one has noticed, the Seeker has risked herself killing dragons for years, and bears the scars of it.”

“That is different,” said Cassandra, annoyed. “I do nothing that others cannot do. I am not the only person who can close a rift.”

“And is that all that is important?” said Trev. “That you do not have one single, unique ability? There are other things that matter. Others who care for you, for example, who might be distressed should you die. You are not entirely replaceable.”

“That is not relevant to the issue,” said Cassandra.

“I think it is,” said the Inquisitor, her voice tight.

“It is a question of consequences,” said Josephine, looking back and forth between them. “If Cassandra falls the consequences will be primarily personal; if you fall, Inquisitor, there are implications for the world.” But the Inquisitor did not even look at her.

“It is a question of duty—” Cassandra started to say, but Trev interrupted her.

“Yes. It is always a question of where your _duty_ lies, isn’t it?” She had gone very white.

“And yours,” said Cassandra. She felt something coiling in her, stifling and predatory.

“Inquisitor,” said Josephine urgently, “the Inquisition needs you.”

Trev finally looked at her. “Indeed,” she said. “The _Inquisition_ does need me. And I understand the idea that the needs of the Inquisition require our duty, above all else; _that_ point has been made to me before, and very clearly. But I do not entirely agree with it.” And she turned and walked away.

*           *           *

They were apart for three days after that, and Trev was uncharacteristically combative with everyone she spoke to.

Cassandra’s anger, although it had been towering, dissipated more quickly, but she felt strongly that she was right and Trev was wrong, and that she must cleave to her principles. She had committed her life to the belief that duty to something higher than the individual was the thing that made people greater than they were. Trev _did_ owe a duty to the Inquisition over her own interests, whether she liked it or not.

But on the third day she overheard Sera talking with Lace Harding. “Inky was in the tavern last night,” she was saying. “She got absolutely shit-faced. Lady Ambassador had to help her back to her rooms. I never seen her like that before.”

Harding made a disgusted noise and said something inaudible, and then Sera was talking about Josephine and some clever thing she had done to embarrass a noble, and they walked on.

Cassandra stood where she was. She _had_ seen Trev like that, once, though never since. It had been a long time ago, after the events at Redcliffe Castle, long before they had become lovers. The Inquisitor had returned lost in grief and confusion and her self confidence had been shaken to the point of non-existence.

Cassandra still thought that she had been right in pointing Trev’s duty out to her. But... the Inquisitor had said things that implied she believed that Cassandra loved duty above all things, and that was simply not true. She _believed_ in duty; she loved Trev. She loved Trev desperately. It suddenly occurred to her that Trev might not understand the finer points of this.

She caught the Inquisitor an hour later at the bottom of the stairs of the main keep, and said to her, “We must talk. May I come to speak with you this evening?”

Trev looked at her with a guarded expression. “Yes.”

When she made her way to Trev’s quarters the Inquisitor was not, for once, working; she had gone out on the balcony and was watching the last light on the mountains. Cassandra knew that Trev knew she was there, but the Inquisitor did not turn or acknowledge her in any way; and so she stood in the doorway, uncertain what to do.

“I am not good with words,” she said eventually to Trev’s back. “I do not always say the things I mean to say. The things I need to say. I... it is not duty that I love. I love you. I do not know how to tell you how much I love you.”

Trev turned while she was speaking, and when she finished, was very still for a moment. And then she said thickly, “Come here,” and opened her arms.

And for quite some time after that, everything was all right.

*           *           *

But Cassandra still did not want Trev to hunt dragons. From time to time she said so; and although the Inquisitor now treated it almost as a joke, it was not one that put laughter in her eyes, but something more like a smouldering flame. At times like that Cassandra seemed to sense something, irrevocably, burning. But she could not give up chiding Trev; it was logic. It was principle.

A number of others, having observed their disagreement, were of the same opinion as Cassandra. Josephine, despite a yearning toward the thrill and romance of dragon hunting and a recognition of the prestige that would come with an Inquisitor known for it, sighed regretfully and put practicality first, and the Seeker knew that she expressed her opinion freely. Cullen also seemed inclined to this position; he was someone else who understood the requirements of duty very well.

Leliana, surprisingly, was not perfectly in accordance with the other councillors. She said privately to Cassandra that yes, it was a risk, but one that she thought on balance to be reasonable; Trev and her companions had by now worked out a system for dragon-killing that was effective and unlikely to result in any deaths. But Cassandra thought she sometimes wavered in this view.

The companions held varied opinions; those who enjoyed the hunt, like Bull and Sera, saw no problem with it. Vivienne, who only thought strategically, on the whole disapproved. Solas disapproved as well, though it was less clear why. The others had no clear position, and neither, on the whole, did much of the population of Skyhold.

Occasionally there were arguments about it, although generally not in front of the Inquisitor or the Seeker. But once Cassandra and Trev, passing by a window, overheard a disagreement in the tavern.

“There’s no reason not to hunt dragons, piss on anyone who says different.” That would be Sera. Trev stopped, almost involuntarily. Cassandra’s stomach tightened.

“Well, but if something goes wrong, and the Inquisitor gets it, where would that leave us?” And that was Krem.

“About where you are now, with a dagger up your arse.” And that was... ah. Cabot, the barkeep. “And no way to pull it out.”

“Well, she’s not _gonna_ fall, is she?”

Krem made a doubtful noise, Cabot made a disgusted noise, and Trev put her head down and started walking again, her shoulders stiff. Cassandra followed, and was careful to say nothing.

But dragon hunts did not happen every day. And in truth it was not just the dragon hunts; Trev risked herself on every expedition. In one action in Emprise she was trapped in a blind corner by a group of red templars, and by the time Cassandra was able to reach her she had been badly hurt. The potions they had dealt with it, but it had been a long, hard fight, and they had come close to running out of those. It had been close enough to worry the Seeker.

The Inquisition had grown to the point where it was no longer a rag-tag group of refugees; it was a large and well-organized army with significant resources. There was no need for unnecessary risks.

*           *           *

On the day she had decided to speak to Trev Cassandra rose early, having had trouble sleeping the night before. She began to train earlier than usual; perhaps she could find her equanimity in the training dummies.

Evidently the Inquisitor had not slept past Cassandra’s rising, though she had not been quite so quick to leave their bed; she passed by in the new light and smiled at the Seeker.

Cassandra stopped and sheathed her sword. “I need to speak to you,” she said.

But she wished to speak in private, not in the centre of the training yard, where even this early someone might pass by. And she wished to be able to speak quietly, not bellow over the din of hammers on metal in the armoury. She led the Inquisitor into the tavern. Cabot did not open the Herald’s Rest until later in the morning, and Sera was off on an expedition; the building would be entirely deserted.

The main floor seemed too open and echoing, so she led Trev up to the mezzanine and sat at a table there.

“I wanted to speak to you,” she started.

The Inquisitor sighed. “Is this about hunting dragons, again?” She already had a stubborn look on her face.

“It is about when Alexius sent you and Dorian into the future,” said Cassandra. Trev’s face abruptly became impassive. “You told us what happened there.”

“Yes...” said the Inquisitor, guardedly.

“It happened because you had been cast forward in time, and were no longer in our present,” said Cassandra.

Trev frowned. “What is your point?”

“That tells us what will happen if you fall,” said Cassandra earnestly. “You have seen what would happen if you were gone. It _must_ not happen. We need you, Trev. You must not risk yourself. It is not just the dragon hunts. It is all the expeditions. Some you are needed for, yes, when there are rifts to close—no one else can do what you do then. But you do far more than that, and every time you do you risk yourself. You must stop.”

The Inquisitor was staring at her in disbelief. “You are telling me that I must not only stop killing dragons, but stop killing red templars, or rogue mages, or wolves, or any of the things that we find ourselves fighting when on expedition?”

“It would be better if you did not go out on expedition at all,” said Cassandra, “except when there are rifts to close.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Trev began to speak again—or rather, to shout. She was on her feet now. “I cannot believe you would suggest this! Maker! What are you thinking?”

“It is only logical,” said Cassandra angrily, rising. “We _know_ what will happen if you fall, and it must be prevented.”

“No,” said Trev.

“What do—” said Cassandra, and then Trev was advancing, shouting at her. Cassandra backed up a step reflexively, and then stopped. The thing that was coiled in her had begun to raise its head.

“NO!” the Inquisitor roared. “I will _not_ stop going on expeditions. You can take that idea and put it right—”

Someone cleared their throat behind Cassandra, who wheeled around, her hand on her sword hilt. There was a shadow at the other end of the mezzanine.

“Er, I was just leaving,” said Varric.

“What are you doing here, dwarf?” demanded Cassandra. The coiled thing unwound, stood, and padded forward.

“Writing,” he said. “It’s _normally_ quiet at this time of day.”

“Get out,” Cassandra growled. “And keep your mouth shut—”

“No,” said Trev. “Let him talk. Why not let him tell everyone, if this is so important? Or is this something you’re ashamed of?”

“It is _private_!” shouted Cassandra. “This is between us, not—”

“Private, my ass,” snarled Trev. “Whether the Inquisitor goes out on expedition is hardly a private matter, it’s a question of policy. Everyone knows whether I do or don’t. The only private thing about it is your nagging me to stop, and I don’t see why I should protect you from people knowing about _that_.”

“Personally, I would prefer this to be a private discussion between the two of you,” said Varric, edging toward them; they were blocking the way to the stairs. “If I could just, er...”

Cassandra scarcely heard him through the roaring in her ears. She swept a hand across a table and sent a couple of empty mugs smashing to the floor. Varric took a quick step back away from the two of them. “ _Nagging_? I only nag, as you call it, because you refuse to do your duty.”

“Duty!” Trev shouted, advancing, her boots crunching on broken crockery. “My _duty_ is to fight against Corypheus! My _duty_ is to try to stop the world from ending! My duty is not to stay cowering in the keep like a frightened nug while others fight for me!”

“You are the Herald of Andraste!” shouted Cassandra. “You are the only person who can close rifts! Your duty is to use your gift for our cause, not to selfishly risk yourself for your own entertainment!”

“Shit,” muttered Varric.

“The Herald of Andraste?” said Trev in a low voice, and the Seeker recognized the signs; the Inquisitor had gone white-hot with rage. Cassandra was baffled by it. Where had all this anger come from? She was making a perfectly reasonable point.

“I am not The Herald of Andraste,” said Trev through her teeth, word by word, her voice still quiet.

“You—” started Cassandra, but Trev overrode her, and now she was not quiet at all.

“I am not the fucking Herald of Andraste!” she shouted, in a roar that could have been heard on the parade grounds. “No matter how much you want me to be! No matter how much you insist on believing it, despite everything! How sad that she doesn’t exist, because she would do exactly as you wish. She would agree with you in everything. ‘Yes, Cassandra. Of course, Cassandra. All for the good of the Inquisition, Cassandra.’ And that’s it, isn’t it?” She was panting with rage now. “It’s the fucking Herald of Andraste you’re in love with. Much more convenient than someone with a mind of their own, someone who refuses to be a puppet to you.”

“Damn you,” shouted Cassandra, unable to tolerate the absolute unfairness of this, her eyes hazing with yellow rage, “Think of someone other than yourself for one moment!”

Trev gave an inarticulate growl and advanced on the Seeker, knocking chairs in every direction, and thrust one hand hard against her breastplate, pushing her back. Cassandra’s back hit a post with a painful jolt and her hand went to her sword hilt before she could think, and then she stopped herself. But she knew that the Inquisitor had seen the movement. “Fuck you,” Trev said conversationally, almost a whisper, inches from Cassandra’s face, and turned to walk away.

Cassandra, teeth bared, caught her arm roughly and yanked her back, sending the table over. The Inquisitor stopped dead, resisting. She was literally vibrating with tension, her hands balled into fists. She had gone absolutely white. “Don’t touch me.”

There was a moment of immobility and the very small part of Cassandra still capable of rational thought realized that Trev had gone completely beyond rationality, and had only the barest grip on herself left. And that rational part of Cassandra let go, and watched Trev walk stiff-legged away, and a few moments later heard the tavern door slam.

“Well,” said Varric after a moment. “Just like Saturday night at the Hanged Man, but with less booze.”

Cassandra seized the nearest standing object—another table—and threw it at him. The table smashed into pieces against a wall, but Varric, who had an excellent sense of self-preservation, was already halfway down the stairs.

*           *           *

Cassandra was so angry she was barely able to think. What Trev had said about her loving only the Herald of Andraste was nonsense; she loved _Trev_. Yes, she believed that Trev had been touched by Andraste. That was not why she loved her. She would not have been able to love the Herald, had that been all there was. It was the person, the person with all the quirks and faults and glorious individuality, that she had fallen in love with.

Though certainly the person did seem to have a number of particularly egregious faults at the moment.

And the Inquisitor _was_ being unreasonable about the dragons, and the expeditions. Of course it was unpleasant for Trev to give up things she loved doing. But this was something required of every adult. Trev was behaving like a child.

The things Trev had said hurt, and hurt badly. They were entirely unfair. She would not go to the Inquisitor; she would not speak to her until Trev apologized. She went to her quarters and paced, walking from one side to the other, wheeling round and back again, over and over, her boots hard and loud and jolting on the planks, setting sharp teeth in her skull. Her eyes felt hot and stiff in their sockets. She was not sure she had every been so angry before.

Leliana found her there two hours later. “What is going on?” said the spymaster. “I tried to speak to the Inquisitor in her quarters, and she threw a chair at me when I came up the stairs. And now she has locked the door.”

“We had an argument,” said Cassandra.

“An _argument_?” said Leliana. “Are you sure it was not a war?”

Cassandra went completely still and looked at her, and the hint of a smile in Leliana’s face disappeared abruptly.

“We argued about her killing dragons,” the Seeker said after a moment. “And risking herself. She did not wish to hear what I said.”

Leliana opened her mouth, then shut it again. Eventually she said, “You must go to her.”

“No,” said Cassandra, still unmoving, repressing an unexpectedly strong urge to draw her sword and drive the other woman from her quarters. “Stay out of it, Leliana.”

The spymaster’s lips tightened, and she turned to walk away, then stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back. “Oh, Cassandra, what have you _done_?” she murmured.

 _What have_ I _done_? thought Cassandra, outraged, but Leliana was gone before she could say it aloud.

*           *           *

Cassandra had arranged to go to the Hinterlands with Vivienne, Blackwall and Sera on the next day, and she went. She was still furiously angry. She did not see Trev before she went, and did not want to.

It appeared that no one had heard of their fight; Varric seemed not to have mentioned it to anyone, though she had not expected him to keep such a choice bit of drama to himself. So no one prodded her about it, which was a relief.

They did prod her about her temper, which was much shorter even than usual, and intemperate in its targets.

By the time they returned a week later, the Inquisitor had taken Bull, Varric and Dorian out on expedition. In the end it was close to three weeks before she saw Trev again. They encountered each other in the courtyard; Trev, walking beside Solas, glanced at her, then looked away and kept going.

Cassandra felt as if she’d taken a pike in the guts. She had finally, painfully, let go of her anger and had been looking forward to Trev’s return and the chance to thrash things out. She had expected...

She had not expected Trev to pretend she did not exist. That what they had between them did not exist.

What they had had.

She retreated to her loft, proceeded to smash more than one breakable object, and did not emerge again until the next morning. By then she had found a level of composure. When Cullen, in conversation with the other councillors and the Inquisitor, called her over to ask a question, she was able to answer clearly and calmly. Trev asked for clarification on a point, and she gave it. They were impeccably polite and distant with each other.

She was not sure how much of this politeness she could bear without killing someone.

Varric may not have said anything, but the gossips of Skyhold were observant, and word quickly spread that the Inquisitor and Seeker were no longer together. Cassandra retreated to her quarters and emerged only when she had to. She made an excuse and did not take tea with Josephine that week, and stayed away from the regular game of Wicked Grace. She did not want to talk with anyone or pretend to be sociable; that could be difficult at the best of times, and it would be impossible now.

*           *           *

Leliana, who rarely left the Rookery, made her way to Cassandra’s loft.

“Well, between the two of you you’ve certainly made a mess,” she said. “The Inquisitor is as touchy as a brooding dragon. And I’ve had one runner in tears after dealing with you.”

Cassandra stared at her and said nothing.

“This can’t go on,” said Leliana. “What are you going to do about it?”

Cassandra put down the book she had been studying and located her anger. “There is nothing to do about it,” she said, scowling. “It is over.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the spymaster. “If it was over you wouldn’t be hiding in your quarters and the Inquisitor wouldn’t be threatening half the people who annoy her. What did you say to set her off so? She refuses to speak about it.”

Cassandra seriously considered doing the same, but she had nothing to hide. “The Inquisitor is risking her life unnecessarily by killing dragons,” she said. “It is not a justifiable risk, because she is the only one who can close rifts. I told her this. She... was very angry.”

Leliana looked at her, frowning. “You have been complaining about her hunting dragons for quite some time. Somehow I think you are not telling me everything that was said.”

Cassandra felt her face flush, infuriatingly. “I told her that it is not justifiable for her to go on expeditions at all—there are too many dangers.”

Leliana’s eyes widened. “I imagine she was not pleased.”

“No,” said Cassandra. “But it is true nonetheless, however much she wishes to pretend otherwise.” She did not try to hide her ill temper.

“I wonder,” said Leliana ambiguously. “And what did she say when you said that?”

Cassandra stared at her wordlessly and shook her head. She could not repeat those things; her anger could not take her there safely.

After a moment Leliana said gently, “She is hurting too, Cassandra. You must find a way back to each other.”

But there was no way back.

*           *           *

Varric appeared unexpectedly in Cassandra’s loft one evening, and she glowered at him. But he walked over to her table, put down a flagon, slid into the chair opposite her, poured what appeared to be ale into two of her mugs, and shoved one toward her. She looked at it and scowled harder.

“You haven’t been coming to Wicked Grace,” he said as if he didn’t notice her expression. She said nothing. “Neither has the Inquisitor; one of you could come, you know.”

He worried about her attendance at his card game? Maybe he would leave if she made it clear she was not interested. “Tell the Inquisitor to attend, then,” she said irritably. “She is the one who can actually play the game.”

“True,” he said, “but you always seem to enjoy losing your money.”

This was so ridiculous that she could not think of a response. She took a drink to cover her confusion. The drink was indeed ale, but strong and unfamiliar and not altogether pleasant; perhaps it was dwarven ale.

“The two of you could come on alternate nights,” he said. “You come on the first and third nights of the month. The Inquisitor comes on the second and fourth. Simple.”

“I am not interested in your card games,” she said, and took another drink. “It is a waste of time and good coin.”

“Only if your worldview is so narrow as to be completely uninteresting,” he retorted. “Card games are about strategy. About planning, and then being quick on your feet when the plans go wrong. You’re quick on your feet when you fight; it is the same thing.”

Cassandra snorted contemptuously. “Hardly.”

“You know I’m right,” he said cheerfully. “You only deny it because you’re terrible at cards, and don’t like feeling incompetent.”

She stared at him, enraged. He invaded her private space, offered her vile dwarven ale, and then proceeded to insult her. It was intolerable. She emptied the mug.

“Why are you here, Varric?” she growled. “To gather material for one of your stories?”

“Only if it’s a happy ending,” he said. “I don’t do tragedy.”

She stared at him and was abruptly unable to speak at all. It must be the drink, going to her head; certainly it was very strong, and she had drunk the first mugful quickly. But he was not even looking at her; he was pouring more ale for both of them, and then rummaging in a pocket. He pulled out a pack of cards and began to deal.

“I’m going to teach you to play properly,” he said. “That way you’ll be able to surprise them all when you do come back to play with us. Or at least have a _slightly_ higher level of self-respect.”

She was so taken aback that she picked up the cards when he dealt them to her.

*           *           *

A couple of days later Cassandra learned that another expedition was planned; but as she half expected, she was not asked to join it, despite there being good reason for her to do so. Well. There were things that needed doing that had nothing to do with Trev or her expeditions; the question of the Seekers, for example. She needed to learn more about the things that had been hidden. Perhaps she could find a way to rebuild; Trev had encouraged her when she had spoken of that possibility.

She would not think of that. She would do the work that needed to be done, and see where it led. There was a great deal of research to do. She would put aside her romance novels; in truth she had no stomach for them now, not even Varric’s stories.

But when she went to the Rookery to send a message asking a scholar for information, Leliana frowned at her. “This trip to the Emerald Graves,” said the spymaster. “Were you not negotiating with Fairbanks and his people on behalf of the Inquisition?”

“Yes,” said Cassandra, thin-lipped.

“Then why are you not on the expedition?”

“I was not asked.”

Leliana looked hard at her. “Would you have gone with the Inquisitor if you had been asked?”

“Of course!” said Cassandra, annoyed. _She_ was not the one who was behaving childishly. “There is no reason I cannot carry out my duties.”

Leliana sighed. “This is foolishness. I will speak to the Council.”

*           *           *

When the next expedition to the Emerald Graves was planned, not long after, a runner brought Cassandra a message from the Inquisitor. _We will be travelling to the Emerald Graves_ , it said. _We will be meeting with Fairbanks. Be ready to travel in two days_. Leliana must indeed have said something to the council, and the council must have said something to Trev.

It felt strange to be riding out with the Inquisitor, and unsettling. It had been close to two months now since they had fought, and Cassandra had seen little of her. Riding behind her now, she was able to watch Trev; she seemed cheerful and full of energy, but it had a brittle edge.

Cassandra shared a tent with Sera. Trev had a tent to herself, something she had always refused before; evidently her feelings about this had changed. Sera was cheerful and noisy, but Cassandra could let the nattering flow of words slide over her, and did not mind, for Sera rarely expected a response from her.

Apart from the negotiations with Fairbanks, which were prolonged but straightforward, there were explorations and new camps to set up and numerous enemies to fight. When she was not taking point Cassandra fell into her customary place, at Trev’s back, without even thinking about it, and was able to stop at least one of the Freemen from catching the Inquisitor from behind.

Trev did not seem grateful. “You don’t need to watch over me like a mother duck,” she snapped.

Cassandra glared. “I am sworn to protect the Inquisitor,” she said. “That has not changed, no matter what else has. I know my duty.”

“Duty!” Trev made a disgusted noise and turned to fight the next assailant.

By the time they returned to Skyhold, any faint hope Cassandra might have held for a reconciliation was long gone. Trev might have accepted her as a companion on the trip, but it was clear she didn’t like it, and her needling was almost constant. Cassandra had given up trying to argue with her, or indeed, to reply at all, and insofar as the Inquisitor was concerned had largely retreated into an angry, sullen silence.

As Cassandra once again became a regular member of Trev’s expeditions, she stayed as much as possible away from the Inquisitor, apart from when they were fighting. Trev had become careless, almost reckless in the way she approached battle. Cassandra glowered and covered for her. She did not say anything to Trev; if a lover could not convince her of her foolishness, an ex-lover certainly would not be able to. But she disapproved, and did not try to hide it. And Trev did not try to curb her irritation with the Seeker.

It did not make for relaxing expeditions. Cassandra’s temper began to flare ferociously at the least provocation. On one trip, after she had shown a scout the side of her tongue in a particularly sharp way, Vivienne drew Cassandra aside and said pointedly, “You need to stop taking your temper out on other people, my dear. It is not fair to those who have done nothing wrong,” and walked away before she could reply.

She looked after the mage in outrage. But there was truth in what Vivienne had said; she might not spar verbally with Trev, who could flay her with a word and had done so eloquently every time she tried, but she had certainly had things to say to others who annoyed her. And everyone seemed to annoy her these days.

It would be better to hold her tongue altogether, and avoid people as much as possible.

*           *           *

“Fear,” said Cole, his voice quick and urgent from the dark corner in the loft. “Flying, fighting, frightened. Everyone falls. Everyone leaves. Begging, broken, don’t leave me. Please. Anger, burning, belly-deep. Safe.”

Cassandra felt her belly grip, and a wave of nausea rose in her throat. “Cole. Stop it.”

“Your mind will not stop it,” he said, and faded from her view.

*           *           *

Somehow Varric had begun to visit her loft quite regularly. She wasn’t sure her skills at Wicked Grace were actually improving under his tutoring, but he didn’t seem inclined to give up hope. And there would have been a strange comfort in his companionship, for he did not seem to expect her to say anything, if only he would not insist on gossiping. He seemed to have his own sources of information, far better than hers now that she had retreated from the life of Skyhold, and to always know what was going on with the council members and Trev’s companions.

And Trev.

Much of what he said was amusing, but hearing about the Inquisitor was... uncomfortable. On one hand, she wanted very much to know what Trev was up to; but then again, she very much did not. She would prefer to turn her mind elsewhere. Doing so was hard enough without Varric constantly reminding her about Trev, and speaking of what Trev had said, and what Trev had done.

Trev seemed to have also gotten hair-triggered in her temper. Now Varric was telling Cassandra about a recent fight Trev had had with Master Dennet, something about a new mount, one that Dennet was none too pleased with. Trev had reacted badly to his comments, and Master Dennet, not one to mince words, had let her know exactly what he thought of her behaviour. And Dennet’s tongue could skin a druffalo.

“He said that a creature like that was an insult to the whole idea of horses, and only a slack-jawed barbarian would see something of value in sending it,” said Varric. “And then he said that he would have expected a Free Marcher farmer to have better sense than to accept it, but perhaps Ostwick nobles don’t have as much sense as the farmers.”

His stories made her feel a set of complicated emotions that she did not quite know how to identify, but certainly anger was part of it, and she let that part show. “Varric,” she said, “stop. I don’t want to know.”

“Yes you do,” he said, and carried on.

She really did not know how to cope with Varric.

*           *           *

She did not know how to cope with anyone, it seemed. Leliana also insisted on talking to her, though listening to Leliana was different than listening to Varric. Leliana seemed to want her to apologize to Trev. Leliana prodded in ways that Varric did not, and the Seeker’s only defense, as with the Inquisitor, was to retreat into angry silence. But as with Trev, that was not truly a defense, and with Leliana it was more difficult to maintain.

“You push too hard, Cassandra,” said the spymaster. “Not everything can be solved by hitting it over and over again.”

“I have not hit anyone,” protested the Seeker, insulted.

“You are like a mabari with a bone when you get an idea,” said Leliana, “and it is much the same thing.”

Cassandra glowered at her. It was not the same thing at all. “ _You_ are the one who is pushing. What would you have me do? I cannot like this recklessness; it is foolish. It risks too much.”

Leliana looked at her. “Be honest. Say what you mean.”

Cassandra shook her head, baffled. What did Leliana think she had been doing?

*           *           *

Nothing she had said or done had made a difference to Trev’s behaviour, except perhaps to make it more careless; but perhaps there was another approach. She had tea with Josephine, and pointed out the recklessness of Trev’s actions. She suggested that the Inquisition had achieved so much that the Inquisitor hardly needed to risk herself on simple exploratory expeditions; she would be of more use doing diplomatic work. She said the same to Cullen, when she saw him in their weekly meetings. She was calm, logical, and stubbornly convinced of the rightness of her ideas. And she thought that both of them agreed with her.

Leliana was the only one who seriously tried to counter her arguments, and she didn’t try very hard. “There is no point in arguing with you,” she said once with a sigh, infuriatingly.

Cassandra did not know what was said in Council meetings. But eventually the dragon hunting stopped. Bull, clearly disappointed, reported that the Inquisitor had said there were too many other tasks requiring her time.

Cassandra doubted this. Since she quit hunting dragons Trev had been blazing through Skyhold like a rogue wildfire, all temper and flareups, and Varric reported that a number of those who crossed her path had been scorched.

*           *           *

“Knots,” said Cole. “Knotted, nasty, nothing can untangle it. It glows like fire, burning, biting. Sharp teeth, striking, tearing, I want to _hit_ something. Why is this so hard? It should be easier. You know that it could be easier.”

“No,” said Cassandra, and turned away.

*           *           *

Josephine was a woman with a mission. She did not try to corner Cassandra into talking about Trev when they were taking tea; Cassandra would probably never have taken tea with her again, and the Ambassador had the sense to know it. But that did not stop her from finding a quiet alcove in the gardens and backing the Seeker into a spot from which she could not easily escape without committing violence. Josephine was a negotiator, and knew very well that negotiations could not happen if the participants were unwilling and had an escape route.

“Cassandra,” she said, “you and the Inquisitor need to talk.”

“We _have_ talked,” said Cassandra brusquely. “It was not productive.”

“That means you have not talked enough.”

Cassandra’s friendship with the Ambassador had grown slowly, but become surprisingly strong; she did not want to lose it. But she also did not want to speak to Josephine about Trev. She did not want to speak to anyone about Trev. That... was private. Her instinct was strongly to go to ground, to disappear, not to display her feelings or speak of what was happening. She did not like being pushed to do so.

“Josephine,” she said, and let some of her anger show, “I do not wish to speak of this.”

“The Inquisitor is hurting,” said the Ambassador. “And so are you. You will both hurt until you deal with this.”

Cassandra stared at her in furious frustration. “I have _tried_ ,” she said.

“No,” said Josephine, “you have demanded. You need to _talk_. You need to _negotiate_.”

Cassandra threw up her hands in frustration, and opened her mouth to shout at Josephine, and then shut it. The anger had capriciously disappeared, leaving her weaponless.

“There is a reason you are the negotiator in Skyhold, and I am not,” she said finally. “I—you know how I am with words.” It was a painful admission. She edged cautiously around the Ambassador.

“Try,” said Josephine, and let her escape.

*           *           *

Cassandra did not want to try; she did not want to expose herself yet again to Trev’s tongue, which she seemed to have so little defense against. But she found the Inquisitor in the stable one day soon after, and made an attempt.

Trev was studying the bog unicorn, the ugly, terrifying beast that had inspired such an interesting response from Master Dennet when it arrived. “With that mount you will frighten the enemy into submission,” Cassandra said, an attempt at lightness. “There will be no need for fighting at all.”

“And that would please you, wouldn’t it?” said Trev.

Cassandra sighed. She was _trying_. “It was meant as a joke.”

“You need to work on your jokes,” said Trev. “They have a distinct similarity to your lectures.”

Cassandra bit her tongue. She would not allow herself to be provoked. “I have not lectured you, as you call it, for some time.”

“No,” said Trev, whose voice was getting louder, “you have moved on to silent reproaches and complaining to others. I preferred the nagging; it was more honest.”

Cassandra began to feel as if a metal band was pressing on her skull. “I speak the truth as I see it,” she said through her teeth. Her own voice was getting somewhat... elevated. “It is unfortunate if it is a truth you do not like.”

“Your _truth_ is singularly limited,” snarled Trev. “It ignores everything you do not wish to consider!”

The bog unicorn shifted uneasily in its stall.

Cassandra, outraged by the hypocrisy of this statement, retorted “You are hardly in a position to criticize me for that!”

“You are so damned self-righteous!” shouted Trev. “Do you ever question yourself? Ever? Do you ever consider that you might not be right about everything? That you do not hold all the answers? That you do not have a unique understanding of truth?”

“A unique understanding is not necessary,” said Cassandra, furious, “when truth is staring you in the face!”

“You would not know truth if it turned around and bit you!” roared Trev.

The bog unicorn shifted again and made what sounded surprisingly like a disgusted noise.

“You forget my training,” shouted Cassandra, “It is not as if I do not have experience with getting to the heart of things!”

“Ah yes, you were trained by the Seekers of Truth,” said Trev loudly. “They have had _such_ a commitment to truth, in all its forms, for so many years. It is a proud heritage to cleave to. Tell me, Seeker, of your duty. Do you share that commitment?”

Cassandra felt as if she had been struck in the face, and knew she showed it. A shadow crossed the Inquisitor’s face, and was gone as quickly; they stared at each other.

There was nothing more she could say. She had tried. She turned away and walked briskly back to her quarters.

*           *           *

“Betrayal, bone deep, breathing stopped, shuddering. My back is barren now. The blade is broken and the shards are inside, slicing, silent, stop them. They _hurt_ ,” Cole said.

Cassandra growled, coming to her feet in a surge of muscle and yellow rage, and he was gone.

*           *           *

She was sitting at her table with a book on the history of the Chantry, but not seeing the words on the page, when Varric came up the stairs. She could not bear the thought of talking to anyone, being with anyone. “I don’t want to play cards tonight,” she said.

“That’s all right,” he said comfortably, pouring ale into their mugs. “We can just sit and drink.”

She looked at him and scowled. “I don’t want to talk with anyone, Varric.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll write. I’m making notes for a new installment of Swords and Shields.” And he pulled out some paper and a quill and ink and set it up on her table.

The man simply could not take a hint. Nonplussed, she took a drink.

After a while the mug was empty. Varric, who had appeared to be paying no attention to her whatsoever, and had been humming over his notes, refilled her mug.

When she was almost finished the second mug, she said, “I suppose you heard the fight in the stables.”

“I imagine most people heard it,” he said idly, crossing out a word. “It was certainly _loud_.” Then, “Listen; I can’t make up my mind between these two sentences. What do you think?” and read them to her. She could not see much difference between them, but picked one randomly, and he made a note. “I’ve been working on a pretty complicated plot,” he said, and proceeded to describe it in detail. The words flowed over her like molasses, slow and sticky and hard to untangle.

Halfway through the third mug, she said angrily, “I cannot make her understand. I do not know how to make her understand.”

Varric gave her a shrewd look. “She probably doesn’t want to understand. It’s a common problem.”

“She didn’t hear what I was saying,” said Cassandra.

“Well, you didn’t hear what she was saying, either. I don’t think shouting actually helps.”

“I heard,” said Cassandra bitterly. “She was very plain in her words.”

“Her _words_ were not what she was saying.”

Cassandra stared at him. “You make no sense,” she said. Her head hurt. It felt like it belonged to something bigger and stupider than herself, something with large teeth.

Varric poured more ale into her mug. “I make perfect sense,” he said. “You’re both shouting past each other, and neither of you is saying what you mean.”

“I say exactly what I mean!” she said, offended.

“And what are you saying, then?” he said. “And what do you mean when you say it?”

She stared at him.

_I need you. Don’t take chances. Don’t leave me. Please._

“Don’t take unnecessary risks,” she said. “The Inquisition cannot afford to lose you.”

Varric made a disgusted noise. “Yeah,” he said, and went back to his writing.

When she woke the next morning, it was with no memory of how she had gotten to her bedroll. She was still fully clothed, apart from her breastplate and boots, and was entangled in a blanket; she stank of sweat, her mouth tasted like a midden, and her head felt like it had been kicked by one of Trev’s mounts.

But there was a potion and a flask of water on her table, and a note from Varric telling her that she should drink the whole thing no matter how awful it tasted; which, as was always the case with such potions, it did.

And for a miracle, she heard no stories laughing at the antics of a drunken Seeker.

*           *           *

Cassandra continued to research the Chantry, and the Seekers, and Tranquility. She no longer knew if there was a point. She didn’t know if it would be possible to find surviving Seekers, or to reform the organization. She didn’t know if she wanted to.

The things Trev had said were true. Everything she had believed in had been a lie. Everything she had done as a Seeker had been a lie. Even the person who had survived her vigil had been a lie. At one time she had been able to think that she might find a way to move beyond that knowledge, but Trev’s words had shown her the folly of that.

Now, with an edifice built on something so insubstantial that it crumbled around her, so contaminated that it stained everything it touched, she doubted that even if she wanted to, she would have any support for rebuilding the Seekers of Truth. But she went through the motions as if she did. She did not know what else to do.

She did know that she did not want to become the next Divine, though she supposed that if she was chosen she would serve. There seemed to be no good reason to serve, or not to; it would happen, or it would not. Perhaps if she was chosen she would be able to do some good that way, if she could not do it with the Seekers. She answered the questions of the Chantry functionaries as honestly as she could, albeit without enthusiasm.

She had little enthusiasm for anything, these days. But there were things to do, and she did them.

She spent most of her time in Skyhold in her quarters. It was better to keep away from people. Her temper had shown itself too often when it should not have; she felt like a bear, blundering and dangerous and foolish and out of its element. It was easier to stay in the loft.

She had taken the space when they first came to Skyhold; it was warm and convenient to the training yard. As the keep was rebuilt, Josephine allocated a comfortable room to her, something appropriate to her station; but Cassandra had refused it. She thought that perhaps Trev understood her reasons, for the Inquisitor had always accepted Cassandra’s quarters without comment, but she knew that most people did not understand why she stayed there. But she had learned during her vigil that she did not need much; and the loft would hold all the things that she truly needed, without the trappings that could distract and confuse her. In her loft, things were as they were, and nothing more.

The loft seemed barren now, and without warmth despite the forge fires. But it was still better than anywhere else, and it was simpler to be there.

She went on expeditions with Trev, and without her. When on the Inquisitor’s expeditions she stood at Trev’s back and protected her, and said nothing in reply when she felt the edge of Trev's tongue. She had very little to say to anyone. Varric continued to tutor her in Wicked Grace and talk at her. She took tea with Josephine occasionally and managed casual conversation, perhaps not as well as she had done in the past, but she was not known for being talkative or articulate. Josephine tried to draw her out, but she made it clear that she would rather listen to the Ambassador talk of her work and Skyhold's doings than speak herself. Leliana sought her out from time to time and prodded her; but Leliana could not force her from silence if she stubbornly chose it.

*           *           *

After a time the expeditions with Trev tapered off. At first Cassandra thought she was no longer being asked to join them, but then she realized that Trev was going out less and less often, and eventually the Inquisitor finally stopped altogether. Cassandra’s attempts to influence the Council must have been more effective than she thought.

It was surprising how little pleasure this gave her.

She rarely saw Trev after the expeditions with her ceased; the Inquisitor also worked from her quarters and did not seem to emerge often. When they did encounter each other, Trev did not speak to her or acknowledge her presence unless it was absolutely necessary. It made Cassandra feel strangely insubstantial, as if she was a spirit and not a person. Perhaps the spirit of faith had returned, replacing her in this husk of a body without her even noticing; certainly she sometimes felt that there was nothing there of the woman she had been.

Time passed. She vaguely noticed that Leliana and Cullen looked more worried than usual. Josephine, when they were taking tea one day, mentioned that the Inquisitor seemed to do nothing but work. “I think she never comes out of her rooms,” she said, “except to come to the War Table. It is not healthy.” But this sounded perfectly reasonable to Cassandra, who said nothing in response. Josephine looked at her and sighed.

*           *           *

“She is lost,” said Cole, “lonely, laden with what she feels, she has locked it away, I cannot reach it. Walls, no windows, weight of chains, changing, charging, do not think, do not think.”

“Cole,” she said. She did not want to hear. “Enough.”

“She cannot move,” he said. “She is bound, breaking.”

Cassandra looked at him. “Do you also speak my thoughts to the Inquisitor?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “She needs me to say her words, your words. So do you.”

*           *           *

Cassandra still went on expeditions with the others; there were a great number of things that needed doing. She did them, competently and for the most part silently. The companions were no longer prodding her about her temper; they seemed now to be trying to get her to participate in the friendly banter they shared on the trails or around the campfire. But she had little to say. It was a mystery to her why they continued to make the effort.

*           *           *

“Cassandra,” said Leliana, “you need to talk to the Inquisitor.”

“The Inquisitor will not speak to me,” said the Seeker.

“Then _you_ need to speak, and make her listen,” said the spymaster. “She will hardly speak to anyone now. You must—”

“I cannot,” said Cassandra listlessly. She did not even have the energy to be angry. “There is no point, Leliana. I am the last person she would listen to. She has made that very clear.”

Leliana made a disgusted noise. “Will you not _try_?”

“I cannot,” said Cassandra. “There is nothing to try with.” And then she ignored Leliana until she finally went away.

*           *           *

Cassandra had obsessively begun to dig through the old library in the depths of Skyhold. Some of the books there were ancient, and most were useless. But she had found one or two old tomes that spoke of the early Seekers of Truth. Perhaps others would have information useful to her studies. And so once or twice a week she would go down to the rooms under the keep and methodically take books out, one by one, and check through them.

It filled the time.

She went down very late one night because she couldn’t sleep, and saw a light showing. It was probably Solas, the only other person she knew who used these books regularly. Well, this was not a problem; they had encountered each other before, and after nodding in recognition, each simply carried on as if the other was not there.

But it was not Solas, but Trev. She was sitting behind the big desk. There were books in front of her, but she did not appear to be reading them.

Cassandra stopped abruptly as the Inquisitor looked up, seeming almost as startled as she was. “I—I’m sorry,” said the Seeker. “I will return later.”

“You’re here, you may as well do what you need to,” said Trev after a second. Her voice sounded rusty. “I will not be here much longer.”

Cassandra thought about it. There was no reason they could not be in the same room. She was not a child, to need to avoid Trev at every turn. She came into the room and made her way to the shelf she had been sorting through on the last visit, and took down the next book in line.

It was annoying that Trev was at the desk; normally she would have taken a stack of books there and gone through them in relative comfort. And it was even more annoying given that Trev did not appear to be actually _using_ the desk. She gave the Inquisitor a surreptitious glance, wondering how soon she would leave.

Trev was unusually pale, considerably thinner than she had been, and there was a haggard, unfocused look in her eyes.

Cassandra stopped and looked at her properly. The Inquisitor did not look at all well. “Are you all right?” she said, abruptly concerned.

“Yes,” said Trev, coming to her feet clumsily. “I’m fine.” She took a step, and swayed. Cassandra took a quick step forward, but Trev held up a hand to ward her off. “I’m fine. I’m just... lightheaded from standing up too quickly. I sat too long without moving.”

Cassandra looked at her. “Trev—”

“I’m _fine_ ,” said the Inquisitor, and pushed roughly past her.

*           *           *

“You think the same thoughts,” said Cole. “Do all lovers do this when they are hurting?”

Cassandra put her head in her hands.

*           *           *

The Inquisitor had already closed a great many of the small fade rifts. But occasionally a new one was found, and word came that someone had encountered a rift in a previously unexplored canyon in the Hissing Wastes. An expedition was mounted under the Inquisitor’s leadership, the first in a long time. Cassandra made sure that she was one of the members.

The desert was even hotter than she remembered, and unpleasant; they travelled by night and baked in tents during the days, and no one got enough sleep. She kept her distance from Trev. Eventually they arrived at the canyons that Harding’s scouts had mapped.

Over time they had developed a method of fighting demons that was both efficient and effective. After a quick evaluation of the demons arrayed against them the Inquisitor would attempt to get close to the rift itself. Unless a demon attacked her directly, Trev would ignore them and focus on disrupting the rift, trusting her companions to protect her. If the demons released by the rift were particularly dangerous or numerous, she would use her Mark against them, but this could only be done once in a fight, so she used it sparingly.

The attack on this rift followed the established method. The rift was larger than some and spewed a large number of demons, including two particularly nasty pride demons. They were too many and too close for the Inquisitor’s companions to deal with all at once, so Trev used the Mark against them, a flash of green.

And nothing happened.

This was not completely true; the pride demons hesitated and shook themselves, but only for a moment. And then they were on her. She had not run because she had not expected to need to, and then it was too late.

Cassandra heard her scream, and realized that something had gone very wrong. “Dorian!” she shouted, and heard an answering cry, and saw a blast of ice pass her shoulder. She skewered the demon she had been fighting, and leapt to where she had last seen Trev. One of the pride demons had been frozen; she hit it hard with her shield and saw it shatter. The other was bent over the Inquisitor. She smashed into it, her sword biting; heard Sera shouting, saw an arrow blind one eye. The demon staggered away. She slashed a hamstring, and it went down, and then she got her blade in its guts, and then an ice blast hit it and it was gone. She slammed her sword into its sheath, swung her shield onto her back, and got her hands on Trev.

It was hard enough to run in armour, much less carrying someone also in armour, but somehow she did it, while Sera and Dorian covered her. Demons did not tend to venture far from a rift, at least not when they had newly come through it; once she’d gotten a certain distance away she knew it would probably be safe to stop.

There was nothing following them. Staggering, her breath wheezing, she dropped to her knees and rolled Trev off her shoulders and onto the ground.

There was blood everywhere.

“Dorian,” she gasped.

“All right, all right,” he was saying, dropping to his knees beside her, holding a flask to Trev’s mouth, and then when he’d gotten that into her, another. “All right,” he said again finally, the pitch of his voice dropping to a more normal level. “That—was a little too close.”

“She's gonna be all right?” said Sera, her voice shaking.

“Yes,” said Dorian. “But she’s not going to wake up any time soon. We need to get her back to camp. And the rift—”

“Damn the rift,” said Cassandra violently. “It will keep.”

“Let’s get her a little further away,” said Dorian. “Then we can get help.”

“I can go,” said Sera. “I’m faster than ser fancy-pants.”

Cassandra nodded, and heaved Trev over her shoulders again.

*           *           *

After a bit Cassandra let Trev down on the ground again and settled with her back against a rock outcropping, shifting so that the Inquisitor’s head was in her lap. Trev looked better; still frighteningly pale, still covered in blood, but the blood was drying now, turning a dull brown and flaking away in the dry air. Cassandra had almost as much of Trev’s blood on her as the Inquisitor did. It stank, a harsh coppery smell, and itched as it dried.

The Inquisitor would have new scars now. She brushed a lock of matted hair out of Trev’s eyes, and then stroked it gently. It had been so close.

“Cassandra,” said Dorian, and she looked at him.

“The Mark didn’t work,” she said.

“If you feel like this,” he said, “how can you let a disagreement separate you?”

She swallowed, set her jaw and said nothing; there was nothing she could think of to say.

“We may not have much time left,” he said gently. “Don’t waste it.”

*           *           *

Trev did not regain consciousness until the next day, and Cassandra left her side as soon as she began to wake, for she knew the Inquisitor would not thank her for being there. But after a little while Trev asked for her.

The Inquisitor was sitting up on a camp chair, still looking pale and drained. “Dorian said that you killed the pride demons and got me away from the rest of them,” she said.

“It was more Dorian’s doing than mine,” said Cassandra. “He had frozen one, so it was easy to kill, and then he finished off the other one after I drove it from you.”

“That is not quite how he tells it,” said Trev. “But whoever did what—thank you.” She had an odd, unreadable look on her face that made Cassandra uneasy; she wondered what else Dorian had said.

“I—I am glad I could do it,” said the Seeker. “They were a good deal larger than you.”

Trev laughed without humour. “They certainly were. If I’d known the Mark would have no effect on them, I would have been nowhere near them.” She looked at Cassandra as if expecting her to say something else; but the Seeker was silent. Finally Trev said, “I dont know why the Mark did not work. But we must find out. And we must still try to close the rift.”

*           *           *

Trev was back to normal after a few days. They tackled the rift carefully, with a much larger party than usual, taking no chances; there was a wall of protection between the Inquisitor and the demons it spawned, and Cassandra was part of that wall. And it did close. Trev could still use the Mark to close rifts, it seemed, if not to fight.

They sent a message by raven back to Skyhold describing what had happened; the return message carried a reaction of appalled consternation. This was the first intimation that the Mark was not as predictable as everyone had come to believe, and that was frightening; the Inquisitor would need its power if she was to fight Corypheus.

Solas and Morrigan, as the resident experts on matters of magic and history, worked together on researching the problem and trying to solve it. (It had been a most _entertaining_ partnership to observe, Varric said privately to Cassandra later.) By the time the expedition returned to Skyhold, they had a theory.

Leliana told Cassandra what had been said in the council chambers when they reported. “They say that the mark requires use in order to gain and focus the power that allows Trev to strike,” she said. “They say that it takes energy from those Trev kills—it is in some way fed by their deaths.”

Cassandra stared. “That... is not a comfortable thought.”

“No, it is not,” said the spymaster. “But the long and the short of it is that once its power is used to kill it must be replenished; and it is the act of killing that replenishes it.”

Cassandra shuddered. “I am thankful that it is Trev that has the Mark, and not Corypheus,” she said. “Trev kills only when she must.”

“Yes,” said Leliana. “We are very lucky in that.”

It was a simple explanation, and one that was easy to test: Trev went out on expedition, killed as many enemies as she could, and tried to use the Mark. The results were not impressive—she had not killed _that_ many enemies—but they were enough to show that the theory was right.

It was an explanation that was thoroughly unsettling for Cassandra, quite apart from the distressing mechanics of the Mark’s function. Her entire argument against the Inquisitor’s participation in dragon hunts, in expeditions, was that it was an unnecessary and unreasonable risk. But failing to participate in such activities, it turned out, also put the Inquisitor at risk. The Seeker had been alarmingly wrong in her assumptions.

She was not a person who tried to hide her mistakes. She found the Inquisitor and councillors in a crush of people in the Great Hall soon after the theory had been proven, and said to Trev in front of all eyes, “I was wrong about the hunting, the fighting. It is clear that it is not an unnecessary risk.”

Trev opened her mouth and shut it again, seemingly at a loss for words.

“I apologize,” said Cassandra formally and clearly. “I am very sorry for the things I have said and done when arguing that you risked yourself unreasonably.” And then she walked away, leaving them all staring after her.

It might not be an unnecessary risk, but the thought of Trev fighting still upset her. She wrestled with herself over this, but her feelings were apparently not amenable to logic, and it was becoming more and more clear to her that her opinions on the dragon hunts and expeditions had in fact never had much to do with logic.

Her feelings. She disliked dealing with them. She had always thought of feelings as being like half-trained horses, sometimes exciting and exhilarating to ride, but also prone to bolt and requiring the discipline of a firm hand. And feelings were _sneaky_. They made one do all kinds of things while pretending they had nothing whatsover to do with it.

Things that later made one deeply ashamed.

*           *           *

Cassandra was passing through the courtyard when Leliana called her over to where the council and Inquisitor were standing conferring. “A letter came for you,” she said, and handed over the sealed parchment.

“A letter?” said Cassandra, looking at the unfamiliar crest. She supposed it was a reply from one of her scholarly requests for information.

It was not.

Something must have shown in her face, for Trev said suddenly, “Cassandra?” and the others stopped talking and looked at her.

“It is a letter from Daniel’s parents,” she said. “I wrote to them, after his death. They have written to—to thank me for my care for their son.” She methodically refolded the parchment.

“I am so sorry, Cassandra,” said Josephine. The Seeker nodded. Then the Ambassador said impulsively, “Will you take tea with me later today?”

“No,” said Cassandra brusquely, walking away, feeling an inexplicable rage at Josephine’s kindness, at all of them, and the way they watched her. She returned to her quarters, her errand forgotten, and did not emerge again that day.

*           *           *

When a herder brought word two days later that a dragon had taken herd beasts from Skyhold’s flocks, it was bad enough; but when the scouts investigating returned white-faced with the news that it was nesting half a day’s ride from the keep, there was near panic. Half a day’s ride was less than half an hour’s flight for a dragon, and a nesting dragon would soon mean more than one dragon.

Trev found Cassandra at the training dummies, working through her routines. When the Seeker finally sheathed her sword, breathing hard, and turned to her, Trev said, “I’m putting together an expedition to kill the dragon. I will be leading it.” Then she hesitated. “I would like you to be on this expedition as well. Will you come?”

Cassandra, entirely taken by surprise, stared at her. “Yes,” she said.

Trev allowed the hint of a smile to tug at the corner of her mouth. “Good,” she said. “We’ll be meeting this evening to plan our approach.”

“I will be there,” said Cassandra.

The Inquisitor began to turn away, and then stopped and turned back. “I’m sorry about the letter from Daniel’s parents,” she said quietly. “I know it is hard.”

Cassandra, almost as surprised as she had been by the invitation to hunt the dragon, nodded wordlessly.

Trev hesitated. “Cassandra—you _did_ care well for their son. And you have always behaved with honour, even when others in the Seekers have not. If you had been the Lord Seeker I know that things would have been very different.”

Cassandra opened her mouth and then shut it again, forcibly suppressing an urge to lash out, and swallowed. Trev’s words were absurdly comforting, and absurdly upsetting. “Thank you,” she said finally, when she could. Trev nodded and walked away.

*           *           *

It was a large and aggressive fire dragon, and there were already dragonlings. But they had planned carefully, based on the scouts’ reports, and chosen their gear and tactics accordingly. The scouts were assigned to deal with the dragonlings, and the Inquisitor’s team took on the dragon.

Bull and Cassandra took point, one on each side, pulling the dragon’s attention back and forth in different directions so that it never attacked either of them for too long, staying close and circling to close with its rear legs so that it couldn’t easily reach them. Dorian’s ice blasts distracted it from the front and slowed it significantly. Trev darted in and out again, her knives flashing, always behind or under the dragon and its reach.

At one point she was not quite quick enough when the dragon wheeled round, and Cassandra’s long arm pulled her under the shelter of her shield; a wall of flame licked round them and was gone as the dragon turned back to Bull. It was a move they had used frequently when they fought dragons together, one that gave Trev greater protection and allowed her to stay closer in, dealing more damage and avoiding the problem of needing to run in and out over longer, more exposed distances. Trev grinned at her from inches away, sweaty and charcoal-smudged, and then was gone, and Cassandra lost her concentration and was nearly struck by an enormous foot. But Trev, ducking under the dragon’s tail to attack from behind, had seen her hesitate, and struck, and the dragon moved a different way, and she was out of danger. Cassandra laughed ruefully at herself. It was not Trev who was in danger from the dragon, evidently.

It was like an old dance they had never forgotten, advance and retreat with all the partners except the dragon knowing their steps. Trev stayed mostly to Cassandra’s side of the dragon, sheltering with her behind the shield from time to time, nimble and quick to the Seeker’s solid, relentless attack, working with Bull to distract the beast when its attention focused too closely on Cassandra.

Eventually the dragon fell, and a cheer went up. Cassandra saw Trev’s enormous grin, and could not help smiling herself, just a little. She had been less afraid for Trev today, fighting a dragon, than she had been for months, when all she had done was _think_ about Trev fighting a dragon. It was very odd.

They had come prepared to camp, knowing that it would be a long, brutal day. In camp she watched Trev laughing with the scouts, and felt a sudden, overwhelming sadness. This day had been like so many days she had spent with the Inquisitor that she had almost forgotten how things had changed. Suddenly very tired, she nodded at Bull and Dorian, with whom she had been talking, and made her way to her tent. She suspected that the scout who shared it with her would be late in returning, if she came at all; she had noticed the woman sharing a kiss with a tall fellow with a scruffy beard. Trev was not the only person to find a dragon hunt exhilarating. Well, it would be peaceful to have the tent to herself.

But in her heart she wished desperately that she was not alone.

*           *           *

Cassandra was in her quarters two days later when Trev found her an hour or two before dusk. The Inquisitor came slowly up the stairs and stopped when she could see Cassandra, who was sitting at her table. “May I come up?” she said.

She had never asked before. Cassandra felt something inside her clench. “Yes,” she said, and the Inquisitor mounted the last few stairs and came to stand by the table.

“I... have not behaved well recently,” said Trev quietly. It was hard to hear her over the noise of the armoury below. “I have said things that were unkind... more than unkind. I have said things knowing they were untrue, because I was angry at you and wanted to hurt you. I have done things because I knew that they would upset you. I...” She hesitated. “I have behaved very badly.”

Cassandra could find nothing to say; it was certainly true. But Trev was not the only one who owed an apology.

“I came to say that I’m sorry,” said Trev. “I apologize for my behaviour. There are no excuses for it. It doesn’t matter that I was angry; I know better. I knew it was wrong, and I still did it. And all my wishing that I had not done it does not change the fact that I did it. But I am truly sorry for it.”

Cassandra felt a terrible, inexplicable fear grip her. “I—have not behaved well myself,” she said. “I am also sorry.” It was a pathetic apology for what she had done, and she knew it.

Trev tilted her head a little and looked at her, then nodded and turned to leave. Cassandra sat looking after her, feeling desolate.

Trev got as far as the top of the stairs, then stopped. After a moment she turned back. “Cassandra,” she said, “is there—do you think there could be a chance for us if we tried again?”

“No,” said the Seeker reflexively, without thinking.

Trev looked past her for a moment, her face unmoving, and then nodded once and turned away, and Cassandra heard her boots, quick on the stairs, and then the door opened and shut.

Cassandra stared at the empty space at the top of the stairs. Why had she said that? She wanted nothing more than to try again. No, she had been right to say it. It was for the best; they had hurt each other badly, and had only now begun to perhaps find a way to be friends again. If they tried to return to what they had been they could only hurt each other more.

This assertion would have been more convincing if she had not already felt as if nothing in the world, not death, not torture, could hurt more than she did at this moment, and that the moment would never end.

She could not stay in her quarters, which suddenly felt dark and stifling. She fled them, not knowing where she was going, only that it needed to be up and open; she felt like an animal in a cage too small for it. Running up a narrow dark staircase, she collided with Leliana, who caught her arm to steady her.

“Cassandra?” said the spymaster, looking alarmed.

“No,” said Cassandra, barely able to say that much, and pushed past her.

In the end she found herself on the battlements. Not just the battlements, but the top of the highest tower. It was a place she had come often with Trev, but she did not think of that; she thought only that it was the farthest in the keep she could get from other people, the least likely for other people to visit, and that here she could breathe. There was a thunderstorm boiling over the distant mountains, and it was already raining over the keep, a hard, cold rain. She didn’t care. She stood looking out at the mountains and the storm and listened to the faint sound of distant thunder and tried not to think, tried not to feel, and failed. She stood there for a long time, struggling with herself. She was soaked through and cold and would likely catch a chill, but she did not care.

She could not bear this. And yet somehow she must.

The ladder to the battlements creaked, so she knew someone was coming after all; she could not imagine who it was, but there was no escaping, and she did not try. She leaned into the embrasure and stared resolutely outward. She would make it clear that she wished to be left alone and they would leave.

But it was Trev, who climbed onto the platform and stood looking at her through the driving rain.

She could not imagine why Trev had sought her out again, but it was clear that she had; this could not have been accidental. And in truth, they had unfinished business. Trev had apologized properly, but she had not. She had not been fully honest, and she owed Trev honesty.

“I am the one who should apologize,” said Cassandra, painfully, to the mountains. “I pushed the Council to stop you from hunting dragons. From fighting on expedition.”

There was a silence, and then Trev said simply, “Why?”

Cassandra shut her eyes. She could not say it. She could not. “Because I was afraid.”

She heard nothing for a little time except the rain and wind, and then Trev spoke again, her voice closer. She had come to lean next to Cassandra.

“What were you afraid of?”

After a moment, Cassandra was able to say, “I was afraid for the Inquisition. For what would happen to the world if you fell. Because you are the Herald, and are destined for something more important than falling to wolves, or a red templar, or a dragon.” She swallowed. “That was what I told myself. But it was only partly true. Only a very little part of the truth.” She stopped again and tried to pull herself together. “The rest... is that I feared for myself. Because I could lose you. Because I love you. And..” She stopped, and then made herself say, “Because loving you so much frightened me even more.”

 _Because I lose everyone I love_ , she did not say, _and I cannot bear to lose you_ , but it was in the spaces between her words.

She refused to weep. But she could not stop wetness from leaking from her closed eyes. She turned her face upwards. It didn’t matter; in the rain Trev would never know.

There was a very long silence, and then she felt Trev’s hand take hers where it rested on the hard stone.

“I blamed you for it, because it was easy,” the Inquisitor said quietly, “and because I was angry that you would ask me to stop. But the Council would have tried to stop me anyway. You may have pushed them, but that was not why they did it. Cullen and Leliana had already said things to me about risking myself. They too feared for the Inquisition, and the world, if I fell.”

There was nothing but the sound of the rain. And then Trev said, “I cannot be a person who sits safely in a tower when others go out and risk themselves. I cannot. The Inquisition asked me to stop, and I tried. But when I did it...

“Cassandra, every time you go out without me I’m afraid of what might happen. I wonder if the others will be able to protect you. I wonder if you will fall because I was not there to do something that might have prevented it. It’s stupid, but I can’t help it. And I couldn’t stop you from going to fight if I tried, could I?”

“No,” said Cassandra thickly. Trev was reflecting her own fears back at her; but there was no other answer possible.

“I—you _died_ for me, at Redcliffe Castle,” said Trev shakily. Cassandra opened her eyes and looked at her, startled. “There was nothing I could do to stop you from fighting then. Or dying. Because it was your _duty_...” She stopped, and Cassandra remembered all the times Trev had flung the word in her face. “Because it was right. And I had to let you do it. I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t—” She stopped abruptly, then said, “All I can do is what I did then. All I can do is let you go.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “I cannot forget what happened then. The things we try to hold are so fragile.... I fight against myself every day.”

Cassandra said nothing. Trev’s hand was the only warm thing in the entire world.

“Cassandra, I can’t stop you from being willing to die for the Inquisition... for me. It is who you are. You can’t stop being who you are. And I cannot stop being who I am, even for your sake, even for the sake of the world. I cannot stop fighting to defend the things I love. The people I love. When we fought I lost you, and I couldn’t bear it, but at least I could still fight for what I loved. I could fight for you. But then the Inquisition asked me to stop. When I tried... there was nothing of me left.”

The Inquisitor was staring straight ahead into the gathering darkness, the faint flicker of far off lightning. “Now it turns out that there is a good, practical reason that allows me to do as I wish,” she said. “But that is beside the point. The point is that the Inquisition asked me to save myself for only one task, that of closing rifts. But that turns me into a tool, and nothing more. A tool is something someone picks up and uses and then throws down till it is needed again. But I’m _not_ a tool. I’m a person. I don’t believe forcing someone to stop fighting for what they love will make us stronger. No one,” she said vehemently, “ _no one_ should be asked to discard everything they think and feel, everything that makes them what they are, in order to be used as a tool. No one should be asked to stop doing what they do for love, because that is to ask them to stop loving. But that’s what the Inquisition asked of me. It’s what you asked of me. I can’t do it. I cannot do it for the Inquisition. I cannot do it for you.” She shut her eyes and then opened them again and looked at Cassandra.

“I want you,” said Trev tightly. “I love you more than I can say. But I do not want to lose myself.”

“I—” said Cassandra. And then she stopped. She had made such a mess of everything, from need and fear and sheer stubbornness. She was supposed to be a Seeker of Truth, one who saw through deceptions to the truth underlying them, but she had not understood the least of what went on between the Inquisition and Trev. Between herself and Trev. She had not understood what her fear was doing to Trev. “I am sorry,” she whispered.

Cassandra was not good at crying. It made her feel helpless, and she hated that; she had spent a great deal of her youth teaching herself how to avoid it, and when she absolutely could not avoid it, she made sure no one saw it. Even Trev had never seen her weep.

She felt her face begin to contort into ugliness, into helplessness, and bent her head to hide it. In a moment she would have herself under control again. But she did not, and she roughly pulled her hand from Trev’s and turned away.

“Don’t,” said Trev behind her, and her voice was raw. “Please.”

The pain in Trev’s voice was too much. Cassandra gave a small gasp and folded in on herself, her legs giving way and her breathing out of control, and slid down the battlement wall, buckles scraping against the cold wet stone, and scrubbed desperately at her face with both hands. But she could not stop herself.

And then arms came round her, warm and strong, pulling her away from the wall. For a moment she struggled reflexively, pushing against the Inquisitor, and then she thought, _But this is Trev_ , and she gave up trying to fight.

When she eventually calmed, a process that was gradual and only happened quite some time later, she gave a final gasping shudder and began to become aware of her surroundings again. Her face was against the Inquisitor’s shoulder—a very wet shoulder, between the rain and Cassandra’s messy weeping—and her arms were wrapped tightly around Trev. And Trev’s arms were a warm circle around her. She did not want to move.

But then she felt Trev’s face turn toward her, and the Inquisitor kissed her ear, and she raised her head. Trev’s eyes and nose were as red and wet as she was sure her own were, and her hair was plastered flat and dripping down her face. Cassandra’s face felt swollen and foreign, as if it belonged to someone else.

“We’re sitting in a puddle,” said the Inquisitor. “I suppose it’s mostly rain. Though I rather think it would be there even if the day was dry.” Cassandra gave a snort that was half laugh and half sob and suddenly was no longer sure that she had finished weeping, and then shivered. She really was very wet and cold.

They disentangled themselves, and Trev came to her feet and offered Cassandra a hand. The Seeker took it and let the Inquisitor pull her up. Trev did not release her hand, but stood looking at her. “I love you,” she said. “I want to be myself. I want you to be yourself. I want to try again. Can you do that?”

Cassandra looked at the tired wet face of the woman she loved, and felt a bolt of fear that said urgently, _No, don’t, no_. It didn’t matter. “I want to try,” she said, and saw something in Trev’s face relax, something frightened and determined and tentative and passionate.

*           *           *

They went to Cassandra’s loft above the armoury. When they were together they had normally slept in Trev’s enormous bed, which was much more private and far more comfortable than Cassandra’s narrow pallet, and where they had the added benefit of not having to be concerned about being quiet. Trev’s rooms had a warm fire, and soft down quilts and pillows. By comparison Cassandra’s quarters had nothing.

But when they came to the corner where a decision must be made as to which way to turn, Cassandra found herself stopping. Trev looked at her. “Do you want to go to your quarters?” she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for the leader of the Inquisition to follow her lover to a dingy, dark loft, and Cassandra nodded. And so that was where they went.

They were both shivering with cold by then, and there were no soft dry robes and quilts as there would have been in Trev’s rooms. There was only the pallet, and Cassandra’s blankets. But it was warm from the heat from the forges. They hung their wet clothes on the staircase railing to dry and rubbed their bodies and hair with the rag Cassandra kept as a towel and crawled together under the blankets. Cassandra wrapped her arms round Trev and felt her settle into her familiar position, heard the Inquisitor give a long, slow sigh. Trev’s skin was cold and damp, and the same was true for Cassandra, but she could feel warmth starting and spreading where they touched, and gradually their shivering began to ease.

If someone had told Cassandra that after such a long time apart they could share a bed, all wrapped together, without wanting to make love, she would have thought them mad; but now here they were, and she found that she only wanted to lie quietly. And Trev seemed only to want to wrap herself round Cassandra and hold on. So they simply lay together, and gradually warmed each other, and eventually slept, lulled by the sound of the rain on the armoury roof.

In the night Cassandra woke once and found that they had shifted; Trev’s back was to her now, and they were tightly spooned, and there were small anonymous lumps beside them on the pallet that she knew were cats; she touched one and heard a comforting interrogatory chirp and then a purr, pressed her nose against the back of Trev’s neck and inhaled her scent, and slept again. She woke again and found their positions reversed, Trev’s arms around her and the cats shifted to accommodate the new arrangement but still there, and drifted back into sleep.

When she finally woke properly, to a crack of thunder in the dim early light of dawn, the cats were gone. It was still raining, and the thunderstorm had arrived. Trev lay sprawled on her back, lax in sleep, the blankets fallen half off her. Cassandra rolled up on one elbow and simply looked at her, the lean smooth muscles, the curve of breasts and hips, the face that was a little too strong and full of character to be called beautiful. There were fine lines by Trev’s eyes, near the corners of her mouth, some from frowning, some from laughter.

Cassandra felt something protective and fierce surge in her, something that threatened to choke her with its hot intensity, like the smoke of dragonfire. Her hands clenched. She wanted... Lightning flared outside the window and after a moment there was another crack of thunder and she closed her eyes and suddenly, for no reason, thought of rain, of standing naked in cool rain after a thunderstorm has broken the sullen close heat of a hot summer day, of turning her face upward into the rain and shutting her eyes as it ran across her skin, and she felt something gradually release, flowing away. Her hands loosened. She felt as if she had been wrung out, emptied, and was waiting to be filled again.

She twisted to find the flask of water that she kept near the pallet and drank a little, and then a little more, and lowered it to find Trev’s eyes open and watching her. Trev stretched out a hand and Cassandra passed her the flask; the Inquisitor raised herself a little and drank, and then stoppered the flask and put it aside, and lay on her side, still watching her. Cassandra, still sitting up, looked at her.

The sounds of the armoury receded. There was only the two of them, herself and Trev, tucked into this dim corner of a dingy loft. Only the two of them. They were the only real thing in this space; there was no room for anything else, no need for anything else. There was no comfort, no softness but what they brought each other. There was only what was between them, here in this barren space. This.

Cassandra reached out to cradle Trev’s face between her hands, and let herself sink down onto the pallet. Trev closed her eyes. Cassandra let her thumbs smooth against Trev’s cheeks, her jawline, her temples, moving slowly, finding the shape of her face, smooth planes and unexpected softness. She ran her hands through Trev’s hair, memorizing the shape of her skull, the hard brilliant bone that lay beneath the skin. She slid her hands down Trev’s neck, finding the knobs of her spine, the strong arching curve of her neck, and felt Trev’s throat move under her palms. And then her shoulders, and down over the sliding biceps and then the fine downy hairs on her forearms to circle her wrists and touch each finger, and up again and across the fragile wings of her collarbones. She moved her hands over Trev’s breasts and ribs, sliding them around to her back, feeling the intricate patterns of bone and deep muscles, over her hips and flanks and across her belly and down her thighs and legs. She ran fingers over the newest scars, harsh and livid against the Inquisitor’s skin. She touched every part of Trev that she could reach.

It was not in any way sexual. It was a need to know, to remember, to find the reality, the solidity of another person. And it was in some strange way a search for injury, a quest for the flinching that indicated harm. But Trev did not flinch from her.

Nor did Trev react with passion. She simply lay quietly, her body warm and loose under Cassandra’s hands.

Finally Cassandra stopped, and simply lay and looked at Trev, one hand on the Inquisitor’s hip, the other wrapped around the Inquisitor’s forearm. After a time Trev opened her eyes and smiled at her, a crooked, half-sleepy smile that said, _We do not ever have to leave this place_. And then eventually she shifted herself a little closer to Cassandra, moving slowly but somehow no longer seeming sleepy at all, and began to kiss her, very lightly, very lazily, barely moving her lips against the Seeker’s, and she moved one hand and let her fingers trail over Cassandra’s ribs. Her touch was like spring rain, falling in a rhythm and pattern so light that you barely felt it, on and on like the smell of fresh green grass and mint and thyme. Her lips were soft and teasing, her breath was warm against Cassandra’s mouth. Cassandra felt like a forest pool, dark and dappled and swelling in the rain, and like a banked fire rekindling.

 _How strange_ , thought Cassandra fuzzily, _that the touch of rain should light fires_.

Trev’s hand had stilled now, but her lips were still on Cassandra’s, still moving, with just a little more intensity, a little more pressure, demanding a little more. It was like kissing for the first time: certain and uncertain all at once. Trev’s lips teased hers, pulling at them a little, insistent in the very lack of insistence, the slowness, the gentleness. Cassandra suddenly, desperately, wanted more; her lips parted, and she caught Trev’s bottom lip between her teeth. Her lover stilled, and then began to kiss her again. And now Cassandra felt the delicate touch of the tip of Trev’s tongue, quick and sly and lightning fast, engage and retreat, teasing her. She tried to catch Trev, to hold her, but Trev’s kisses avoided commitment, suggesting the possibility of more but not allowing it, until Cassandra’s breath was coming short in her chest and her hands had tightened on her lover, the strength of her grip signalling her need.

Her need—it was not just the need for touch, though that was there as well. The storm was building, all thunder and lightning, and lifting her with it.

But now, abruptly, the image of rain on skin came into her mind again, and stopped the movement that had started, and she loosened her grip and gave in. She opened her hands and relaxed and gave herself entirely to the feeling of rain, of Trev’s mouth, Trev’s lips, Trev’s tongue.

Trev teased for a few moments longer, and then shifted to lie over her lover and caught Cassandra’s head between her hands to cradle it, and began to kiss her in earnest, no teasing now, careful, slow, deep kisses that left Cassandra shuddering under her. Cassandra stretched out her arms to either side, feeling rough wood under her palms and the weight of Trev’s body anchoring her.

Trev stopped kissing her for a moment, and looked at her; and Cassandra, utterly aroused, lost and helpless and not caring if Trev saw it, looked back. Trev’s eyes were dark and her face flushed. She ducked her head and kissed Cassandra’s neck, and across her collarbone, and then released Cassandra’s head and put her hands on the Seeker’s ribs and shifted her body lower to kiss the curve of her breast. Her kisses were light again, like feathers, like a drift of rain, fluttering and teasing. And then one hand came up to cup Cassandra’s breast and hold it steady against the abruptly more deliberate attentions of her lips, and lightning shot through Cassandra’s belly and she arched against Trev’s mouth and stretched out her arms even further, opening her hands and rolling her palms upward.

Trev was unhurried and completely, utterly focused. Cassandra lost all sense of time, drifting in sensation. But eventually Trev moved again.

Cassandra loved kissing. She loved the romance of it, the tenderness, the anchoring sense of discovery. She loved the way it lit slow fires that grew into conflagrations. She had rarely had an opportunity to indulge herself in this, and had been delighted to discover that Trev felt the same way, and was more than happy to spend a great deal of time kissing. But eventually they would find that kissing was not enough, and they would move on to other activities; so when Trev shifted Cassandra had half-expected her to slide further down.

But she did not. She moved her body upward, to cover Cassandra’s again, one leg between the Seeker’s thighs, the weight of her solid and intensely present. And again her hands came up to hold Cassandra’s head steady, and again she began to kiss her. And now Trev was slowly, gently, rocking against her, an infinitesimal movement that was barely noticeable, and her own body was responding, rising to the slight pressure.

The kissing. The feeling of Trev’s weight, the whole length and closeness of Trev’s body against her own. The way Trev was moving so very slowly and gently, the way their hips were rocking in rhythm, but with barely more than the movement caused by breathing. The heat pooling between her legs and Trev’s wetness against her thigh. And the kissing, oh Maker, the kissing. She would not have thought that she could be so aroused by simply kissing, so aroused that she thought that if Trev touched her now she would shatter; that the kissing alone might be enough, and Trev might not even need to touch her. Nothing existed now but Trev’s hands holding her head, steadying her, and Trev’s mouth against her own, and the falling rain, the thundering rain on the roof and the silver rain that ran over her body and into her open hands.

And then one of Trev’s hands shifted, reaching down. Cassandra shuddered and cried out, her voice muffled against Trev’s mouth, and felt Trev’s fingers move against her—she rose to Trev’s hand, and shuddered, again and again, thunder and lightning and the roiling growth of a thunderhead rising against the sky and shifting, changing, dissolving. She could not stop. Her hands clenched and opened and clenched again and then, desperate, reached, and pulled Trev hard against her, growling deep in her throat, and she bent her leg so that her thigh rose between Trev’s legs, and the Inquisitor moved her hand abruptly, almost clumsily, and gasped against Cassandra’s mouth and curved against her, her body straining, her breath stopping, and then she made a small hoarse sound and gave way, and her hand moved again reflexively, fingers curling, and there was nothing but light, white lightning and the roar of the thunder in Cassandra’s ears.

Afterwards she lay trying to regain her breath, and felt Trev’s breathing catch awkwardly, and again, and realized that the Inquisitor was weeping, and she wrapped her arms around her and held her, and kissed her hair, her cheek, her ear, whatever she could reach, until she felt the shaking begin to ease. There were tears on her own cheeks, and she did not care. There was more light from the windows than the forges now; the storm had ended. Trev lay still and quiet in her arms.

It would not be easy. There was still much that they must say to each other, hurts that must be taken out and examined. There were things that would be difficult to bear. And she did not have the skills that made doing so easier; she did not have the words to build bridges without pain. They would struggle, and make mistakes, and strike out at each other. But they would try, and they would heal their hurts together.

She knew that teeth would be bared again, and sometimes blood might be drawn, or a smouldering fire might flare and leave a brand seared on flesh. But the storm would come, all lightning and thunder, and bring silver rain; in the end it would always return, and the fires would be put to rest, and the hot flesh soothed, and the snarl would turn to a smile.

You cannot live and avoid the teeth, the fire, Cassandra thought then, and knew it for truth. You cannot love and keep yourself from the things that hurt you. All you can do is turn into the rain, and let it fill you, and empty you, and fill you again.

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhere along the line I thought, I wonder what would happen if Cassandra and Trev had a really bang-up fight, the kind where it's actually serious enough to break up their relationship? What would set it off? What would be so upsetting to either of them that they could allow such a thing to happen? How would their personalities and histories play into the fight and then their reaction to the breakup? And, of course, how could they find their way through it if it was really that serious? This story is my answer to that question.
> 
> Several more things that fed into it:
> 
> \- The fight in [Aches and Pains](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4034131), which was certainly bang-up but not in any way serious—it started me thinking about more serious fights. 
> 
> \- "[The Thunderhead](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4076221/chapters/9193459)" (chapter 9 in the Shards collection) started out being about Cassandra and her apparent ferocity, but then morphed into something about anger and how Cassandra and Trev handled it. That got me thinking about how they would handle a serious fight, and how they would interact. There were also some interesting things said in the comments on that story that were helpful (thanks [lecriteuse](http://lecriteuse.tumblr.com/)!).
> 
> \- What happened in [Mercy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3933361), where there was a breakup but Leliana essentially did not permit a fight to happen (passive aggressive, much?)—I thought it would be an interesting comparison.
> 
> The scene where Varric is trapped in a room with them while they fight is a prompt from lecriteuse: thank you again! I had enormous fun with that. The line in the same scene about the Hanged Man on Saturday night is from my partner pericat. (I scavenge shamelessly from all sources and appreciate y'all very, very much.)  
> Pericat pointed out that Trev is pretty nasty in this. That's out of character from the person I've drawn in other stories. This is true, but I worked out a pretty complicated backstory explaining why—it's just not explicit in this because it's all seen from Cassandra's point of view. I hope that some of the reasons come through clearly, though, in the end.
> 
> Beta-reading by the wonderful pericat as well. Thanks, love.
> 
> I made a playlist for this story, which is something I don’t usually do. All very angsty and full of feels, of course, right up to the end. 
> 
> Wyrd Sisters - [Of All the Things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnRb7D_jgGc)  
> Ane Brun - [Do You Remember](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vomMJ62HOhc)  
> Janis Joplin - [Ball and Chain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1zFnyEe3nE<br) (bonus points, watch for Mama Cass’s reaction)  
> Annie Lennox - [Big Sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H03GHI2TJNk) (listen to the words carefully; I mean, vortex in the sky?!?)  
> Pink - [Try](https://vimeo.com/66070035) (the dance has stylized violence that some might find disturbing, but... wow.)  
> Holly Cole - [I Can See Clearly Now](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1fvjj_holly-cole-trio-i-can-see-clearly-n_music) (one of the most perfect versions of a song that I have ever heard)


End file.
